Forbes Predicts: Obamacare Will Be Repealed Well In Advance Of The 2014 Elections

Obamacare Will Be Repealed Well In Advance Of The 2014 Elections

Steven Hayward, Contributor

Prediction: even if HealthCare.gov is fixed by the end of the month (unlikely), Obamacare is going to be repealed well in advance of next year’s election. And if the website continues to fail, the push for repeal—from endangered Democrats—will occur very rapidly. The website is a sideshow: the real action is the number of people and businesses who are losing their health plans or having to pay a lot more. Fixing the website will only delay the inevitable.

It is important to remember why it was so important for Obama to promise repeatedly that “if you like your health insurance/doctor, you can keep your health insurance/doctor.” Cast your mind back to the ignominious collapse of Hillarycare in 1994. Hillarycare came out of the box in September 1993 to high public support according to the early polls. This was not a surprise. Opinion polls for decades have shown a large majority of Americans support the general idea of universal health coverage. But Hillarycare came apart as the bureaucratic details came out, the most important one being that you couldn’t be sure you’d be able to keep your doctors or select specialists of your choice. The Clintons refused to consider a compromise, but even with large Democratic Senate and House majorities the bill was so dead it was never brought up for a vote.

Remember “Harry and Louise”? Obama did, which is why he portrayed Obamacare as simply expanding coverage to the uninsured, and improving coverage for the underinsured while leaving the already insured undisturbed. But the redistributive arithmetic of Obamacare’s architecture could never add up, which is what the bureaucrats knew early on—as early as 2010 according to many documents that have leaked. The wonder is that Obama’s political team didn’t see this coming and prepare a pre-emptive strategy for dealing with the inevitable exposure of the duplicity at the heart of Obamacare’s logic. Now that people are losing their insurance and finding that they may not be able to keep their doctor after all, Obamacare has become the domestic policy equivalent of the Iraq War: a protracted fiasco that is proving fatal to a president’s credibility and approval rating. The only thing missing is calling in FEMA to help fix this Category-5 political disaster.

Senate Democrats endangered for re-election will lead the charge for repeal perhaps as soon as January, after they get an earful over the Christmas break. They’ll call it “reform,” and clothe it in calls for delaying the individual mandate and allowing people and businesses to keep their existing health insurance policies. But it is probably too late to go back in many cases. With the political damage guaranteed to continue, the momentum toward repeal will be unstoppable. Democrats will not want to face the voters next November with the albatross of Obamacare.

The politics of the repeal effort will be a game theorist’s dream. Tea Party Republicans will resist “reforms” to Obamacare in favor of complete repeal. Democrats will try to turn the tables and set up Republicans as obstacles to reform, hoping to inoculate themselves prospectively from mayhem at the polls next November. The House might want to insist that the Senate go first; after all, it was the Senate version of the bill that the House had to swallow after Scott Brown’s election in January 2010. The House can rightly insist that the Senate needs to clean up the mess they made. Obama may well give Capitol Hill Democrats a pass on a repeal vote, and veto any bill that emerges. He’ll never face the voters again.

This wouldn’t be the first time that a health care entitlement was repealed. The same thing happened in the late 1980s with catastrophic coverage for seniors. Because seniors were made to pay for their benefits under that scheme, the uproar forced Congress to repeal the measure barely a year after it went into effect. Obamacare looks to be on the same political trajectory, and for the same reason. Obamacare represents the crisis of big government; the limits of administrative government have finally been breached. For the first time ever, some polls are showing a majority of Americans doubting the goal of universal health coverage.

The hazard of the moment is that a compromise “reform” that drops the mandate and attempts to restore the insurance status quo ante could leave us with an unfunded expansion of Medicaid and a badly disrupted private insurance market. Republicans should avoid both the political traps and a new fiscal time bomb by being ready with a serious replacement policy, based on the premium support tax credit ideas that John McCain advocated (poorly) in 2008. While anxious liberals are in dismay, they should recognize that Obamacare may well have achieved its chief purpose of making universal or at least greatly expanded health coverage a fixture of American social policy. The cost to liberalism may prove fatal, however.

This is what this forum has turned into. Misleading titles, slanted article after partisan article passed off as "news".

Instead of just hating there should be some examination as to why people who believe like you do keep losing national elections. The only elections you win are gerrymandered elections. Demographic death spiral anyone....Bueller....Bueller...

I'll give you a hint..........it's not because your not conservative enough.

Yo,Big Red Asshat!! You talk like the Republicans haven't won a presidential race or any other race in 50 years.

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Originally Posted by Mr. Kotter

Sounds like a great idea. I got some friends at DHS and the CIA, who would really love to read your stuff from here.

The house of representives is not a "national" elections. If it were, since the Democrats received more votes than Republicans in the last house election they would be the majority.

Well, national to me is the national govt. But okay. Now, as to the Democrats receiving more votes they'd be the majority...well it didn't work out that way since the Rs kept their majority even if it just slimmed down.

However, my point was 2010 was the largest sweep of Ds out of office. One thing that establishes--things do not remain the same in politics.

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Keep on dreaming. The Republicans have lost the popular vote in 5 out of the last 6 presidential elections. Thats not a trend. It's demographic reality. Thats a paradigm shift.

I never said it was a trend. I simply pointed out a mathematical fact as to who won how many national elections. Those numbers show there's no landslide of defeats by the left, but a switching back and forth but with a Republican lead.

Keep on dreaming--the popular vote doesn't count. Furthermore, not all those popular votes were large differences. And Bush, once the votes were counted didn't lose the popular vote either. So post those numbers. Lastly, conservatives did not vote due to Romney being the candidate.

Keep on dreaming--nothing stays the same forever. The numbers still exist despite the demographic changes still. Blacks with a large dose of help from the media, got Obama elected.

One popular vote victory in a Presidential election since 1984. Thats 29 years and counting. When Hillary wins in 2016, it will be 34 years and counting. One popular vote win. Go ahead and bury your heads in the sand and yuk it up.

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Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.

The house of representives is not a "national" elections. If it were, since the Democrats received more votes than Republicans in the last house election they would be the majority.

Keep on dreaming. The Republicans have lost the popular vote in 5 out of the last 6 presidential elections. Thats not a trend. It's demographic reality. Thats a paradigm shift.

The popular vote doesn't mean anything. You can fill this "o" with all the meaning that the popular vote has. Districts are districts, same as the electoral college is the electoral college. You either win them or you lose them. And if you lose them, you don't get to erase those wins with empty talking points. You just lose.

The entire point is to get involved. I hear all this talk about gerrymandering from a lot of people in my life who wouldn't know a caucus from a cactus. Districts are drawn by the people who are involved. That's the way the system was designed, so that minorities in this country could organize and have a voice in government.

It reflects the will of the people more accurately than partisan district votes.

Oh bullshit. This country was not based only on the "will of the people" alone. It was based on federalism with sub-units and power being divided on purpose. The Presidential office having little power on domestic issues since he was to represent the country as a whole unit. Hence that office dealing with other foreign leaders. Then the senate was to represent the states. It was the House that represents the "will of the people" the most--which is why the system gave the legislative branch the most power particularly the power of the purse.

It reflects the will of the people more accurately than partisan district votes.

Your Popular Vote losses by Republicans doesn't bear out in fact. I just checked them. In 9 election cycles starting with 1980 Carter v Reagan 4 elections the Rs won the Popular vote. So your claim that this hasn't happened since the 80's is false as Bush won the popular vote in 2004. But note polls still showed most felt the country on the wrong track.

This is how it went:

1980 - Reagan, 1984 - Reagan, 1988- Bush I, 1992 -Clinton did not win a majority but only a plurality of the vote, 1996- Clinton, 200- Bush (once votes in Florida all counted but this is not always noted in reporting including the link I am using), 2004- Bush, 2008- Obama, 2012 - Obama who won both.

So it still comes down to 5 for the Republicans and 4 for the Democrats depending on how you count Clinton's plurality in 1992 and Bush 2000. Not exactly a trend you say? Neither is it for the Democrats.

The popular vote doesn't mean anything. You can fill this "o" with all the meaning that the popular vote has. Districts are districts, same as the electoral college is the electoral college. You either win them or you lose them. And if you lose them, you don't get to erase those wins with empty talking points. You just lose.

The popular vote is not determinative in a presidential election, but it does mean something. It means who more people actually wanted.

Funny how Rs take the "it's meaningless" position with W's popular vote loss. Because I remember how for years Rs argued about Clinton's legitimacy by ignoring his 5 and 8 million-vote wins and instead whining that he didn't get over 50% of the vote. Anyone remember that?

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Quote:

Reporter: "I guess the question is: Why should Americans trust you when you accuse the information they receive as being fake, when you're providing information that is not accurate?"

TRUMP: "Well, I was given that information. I was, actually, I've seen that information around.

I don't understand why people can't just post thread titles that are a copy and paste of the article's title, or at least are a fair summary. It gives detractors from the article's premise all the cover they need when you don't.

The popular vote is not determinative in a presidential election, but it does mean something. It means who more people actually wanted.

Funny how Rs take the "it's meaningless" position with W's popular vote loss. Because I remember how for years Rs argued about Clinton's legitimacy by ignoring his 5 and 8 million-vote wins and instead whining that he didn't get over 50% of the vote. Anyone remember that?

Did the ACA ever have this important popular support? As in a simple 51 majority among the people? Can anyone find a single shred of evidence that would show the people wanted this law?

And before you say yes, bc Obama won the presidency, let's all recognize that there is more to being elected than one policy. Hell, I'd venture to guess that a good 25-30% of people that vote couldn't tell you a single policy their "candidate" supports. But I would love to see a poll from ANY of the different polling sources out there that ever showed a majority wanted this law.

Furthermore, even if people voted for Obama strictly because of the ACA, they did so on proven undisputable false promises and lies. Hard to argue that, no?